Sunday, March 2, 2008

Alicia and Ian Final in ABNA!

Some of you might remember that my co-blogger Alicia and reader Ian were in the Amazon Breakthrough Novels Award competition. In the first round, readers voted and posted comments. I forget how many thousands of entries there were in the first round, but I'm delighted to report that both Ian and Alicia made the cut! If I remember right, this puts them in the top 2% of all entrants.

They are both now in the final 100. (Amazon doesn't have a list of finalists anywhere that I could find, so this link goes to an indie site.)

Their work will be reviewed by a team of Penguin editors, who will winnow the field down to the top 10. I hear they'll announce the finalists Monday, so let's all keep our fingers crossed for two of our own!

I couldn't find much on the amazon site about the current state of the contest, but for those of you interested in more about the top books, there's a new website for the top 100. Ian's book is one of the launchpage books over there right now.

Good luck, Alicia and Ian!

Theresa

13 comments:

Susan Helene Gottfried said...

Sweet! Good luck, guys!!

Dave Shaw said...

Congrats and best of luck to you both!

Ian said...

Thanks, Susan, Dave, and Theresa. And best of luck to Alicia too.

I'm not optimistic about my chances at advancing tomorrow. Out of the 5000 original entrants, only 5 Sci-Fi/Fantasy entrants made it into the Top 100 (and not a single Romance, if you can believe that!). Given that massive cutback, I can't see Penguin deciding to bring more than one into the Top 10; and more likely it will be none.

Ian

Anonymous said...

Me neither, Ian, though hope springs eternal. Mine's in Gen Lit, which is a big Penguin market, but of course that means more competition (56/100, I think).

But what the heck. Didn't cost anything. :)

Best of luck to us both!
Alicia

Unhinged said...

I didn't know Alicia was in the ABNA. Wish I'd known sooner. Ff she's one of the finalists, I'll definitely read and leave a comment. (I already did for Ian.)

LUCK! To both of you.

Maria Zannini said...

Way to go! That's great news. Now on to the last stretch. Best of luck to both of you!

Anonymous said...

Good luck to both of you! What an accomplishment. Who knows, Ian? Sci-fi's so big. New magazines and e-zines all the time. Some of great blockbusters of our day were Sci-fi. It's a win-win either way. From 8,000+ to 100? Magnificent.

Anonymous said...

Congrats to you both. Such a great accomplishment.

I had read that the first set of community comments weren't used, but that was scuttle-butt on the forums and I can't validate it. Obviously Penguin is going to go for mss that fit their business.

Good luck!
Jan

Liane Gentry Skye said...

Fabulous news. Congratulations!

Dara Edmondson said...

Congrats! Keeping mu fingers crossed for you both!

PatriciaW said...

Congrats Alicia and Ian!

Genella deGrey said...

Good Luck, Alicia and Ian!
I'll keep my fingers & toes crossed for you!
:)
G

Dave Shaw said...

Sadly, it looks like Alicia and Ian both missed out on the Top 10 cut. :-(

At least Ian can take solace that none of the SF entries made the cut. I guess we're still in the ghetto...